A group of bioelectronics researchers say they have made a major step toward being able to regulate nerve cells externally.  Their breakthrough is based on an ion transistor of plastic that can transport ions and charged biomolecules and thereby address and regulate cells.

Previously, use has been made of nano-canals and nano-pores to actively control the concentration and transport of ions but those components are difficult to produce and function poorly when the salt content is high, obviously something that would be an issue in interaction with biological systems.

Is the Sun going to enter a million-degree galactic cloud of interstellar gas?

A group of scientists are suggesting that the Ribbon of enhanced emissions of Energetic Neutral Atoms(ENA) discovered last year by the NASA Small Explorer satellite IBEX could be explained by a geometric effect coming up because of approach of the Sun to the boundary between the Local Cloud of interstellar gas and another cloud of a very hot gas called the Local Bubble.

If their hypothesis is correct, IBEX is catching matter from a hot neighboring interstellar cloud, which the Sun might enter in a hundred years.

The International Institute for Species Exploration  has announced their top 10 new species described in 2009.

Making the cut are a minnow with fangs, golden orb spider and carnivorous sponge.

Scientists analyzing the temperature and salt levels of the Western Mediterranean Sea between 1943 and 2000 have found that the deep water has become progressively hotter and saltier, and that, since the 1990s, this process has speeded up.

Each year the temperature of the deep layer of the Western Mediterranean increases by 0.002ºC, and its salt levels increase by 0.001 units of salinity. These changes, although minimal from year to year, have been continuously and constantly occurring at a faster pace since the 1990s.

The results are consistent, "but to confirm this accelerating trend, we need to monitor it over the years to come", said Manuel Vargas-Yáñez, researcher at the Oceanic Centre of Malaga of the Spanish Institute of Oceanography (IEO).

Scientists have long wondered what is happening at the cellular and molecular level to bring about the amazing coordination that occurs when birds migrate or fish gather in schools.

A team of researchers writing in Science has found evidence that this collective behavior can arise in cells that initially may not be moving at all, but are prodded into action by an external agent such as a chemical. Their study has shown that food-deprived amoebae are prodded into their coordinated clumping by the chemical cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP), effectively changing the parameters of the cell environment.

Too often, scientists do an inadequate job of communicating information to the public in a factual, non-technical, credible and neutral format.

The authors of a new analysis of science communication in PNAS  say they have developed an effective communication strategy that could help experts connect with the public.

"More effective communication is badly needed at almost every level of science," said Kirsten Grorud-Colvert, a research associate in the Department of Zoology at Oregon State University. "It doesn't have to be expensive, but we have to get out of the ivory tower, away from our scientific jargon and work more closely with our various audiences."